Notes on Early Italian Settlers in the Yuba River Region of the Sierra Nevada in California

Columbus Day, 1890s, CA
Courtesy of the Calaveras County Archives

We have just celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day, formerly known as Columbus Day. It’s unlikely that the second Monday of October will ever revert to Columbus Day again because, in the spirit of discovery, we are more aware now and must correct course. This year (2021) President Biden acknowledged the obvious by recognizing the importance of the people native to the USA.

 

None of this rethinking is inspired by negative impulses toward our valued Italian-American community, who deserve a day to celebrate their roots like the Irish (St. Patrick’s Day), Black Americans (Juneteenth) and Chinese New Year – there are plenty of other examples of cultures that celebrate their contributions to the American mosaic.

 

In 1492, after nearly ten weeks at sea, Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer-entrepreneur representing Spain, landed on what is today San Salvador island in the Bahamian archipelago thinking he was in India. He was greeted by the Lucayan-Taino people who called the island Guanahani. Archaeologists believe the aboriginal settlers arrived 800 years prior to Columbus. Personally, I think that the “finding” of the America continent is a topic worthy of historical accuracy. It’s very important to be clear about who was here first and preposterous to credit a foreign explorer for “discovering” a place where people already lived, and to reflect on what happened in our history after that, in terms of the colonization, then displacement and oftentimes genocide of those people.

 

Columbus was hardly a hero, but his continually propagandized story sanctioned the “founding” of the United States by European Christians. Well before the creation of Columbus Day, Kings College in New York was renamed Columbia College in 1784, the District of Columbia was created in 1790, and Columbia, South Carolina was named in 1786, while Columbus, Ohio was named in 1810. There is also the Columbia River and hundreds of other places with similar names. Then there is the female personification of the United States as Columbia who was commonly used in patriotic graphics until the Statute of Liberty largely replaced her about 1920.

 

John Gast’s 1872 painting American Progress, depicts Columbia as the Spirit of the Frontier, carrying telegraph lines across the Western frontier to fulfill manifest destiny, another imperialistic rendition of superiority and sanctity because, supposedly, was God's will. 

American Progress by John Gast, 1872
(Note the Indigenous People and Buffalo being run-off their land)

It’s telling to note that both Indigenous peoples and Italian-Americans sought respect and recognition on the national level after suffering oppression.  Most Italian affinity groups, like the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), don’t exonerate Columbus for his crimes, they believe that the holiday’s true meaning, Italian-American cultural pride, shouldn’t be sacrificed. San Francisco’s Italian Americans celebrated their first Columbus Day in 1869 and in 1882, a group of Irish Catholic priests founded a fraternal service group called the Knights of Columbus, which grew to have a heavy Italian American membership.

Front Page of a Newspaper in 1888
The Caption Says: "Italian Immigration and its evils – A summer night scene in the Italian Quarter, 
New York City"

Despite living and working for hundreds of years in what would became America, Italians were vilified and faced religious and ethnic discrimination. In 1891 there was a mass lynching of eleven Italian Americans by a mob in New Orleans (there were so many Sicilians in the French Quarter at the time that it was known as “Little Palermo”). Six Italian men were accused of murdering the police chief, but despite a trial resulting in six not-guilty convictions and three mistrials, the city went wild. Italian Americans sought a way to mainstream and humanize themselves in the face of rampant discrimination. Meanwhile in the same year, in Sierra County California, where many Italians had settled, the Messenger, despite world-wide news coverage warning of potentially dangerous Italians, editorialized in their support: “They are fully the equal of any other class in everything that goes to make good citizens.”

 

In 1850 a group of unnamed Italians discovered a quartz ledge in Sierra County that would later become the famous Sierra Buttes Gold Mine. It was situated at 5,292’ and ultimately produced $17-20 million dollars in gold. The nearby towns of Downieville and Sierra City were based on gold mining employing a considerable number of Italians who also planted gardens and orchards on terraces that they created in the steep North Yuba canyon. Prior to the gold rush most of the east coast Italians lived in ghettos where they worked as laborers. 

 

California’s landscape and climate are similar to Genoa’s where most of the early migration originated. Within Genoa is the region of Liguria where there are 25,000 miles of terraced hillsides, peaks as high as 6,500’ and an average altitude of 3,200’. Italian miners, at home in the north-central Sierra Nevada, began buying agricultural land, tending shops and pursuing professions like stone masonry, carpentry and charcoal manufacturing. 

 

Charcoal Flat, North Yuba River 

 

Italians in California did not confine themselves to winemaking. The giardinieri (or gardeners) developed a thriving industry growing produce on the outskirts of San Francisco and other towns. The size of their gardens ranged from small plots on the edge of town to large ranches. John Lavezzola arrived in Sierra County in 1851 and settled at Charcoal Flat where he created a large potato patch. G. B. Castagnetto who was from a farming family in Genoa, arrived in California in 1854, and in Sierra County in 1857. He settled in Sierra City, where he engaged in ranching and merchandising. Other early residents included Antone Costa, Joseph Mottini, and Michael Lavezzola. Other ranches included the Romano Ranch, the Lagomarsino Ranch, the Bottaro Ranch, the Costa Ranch the Lavezzola Ranch and Joseph Maria Pianezzi’s place at China Flat. These industrious people typically identified with the regions where they were born – Italy wasn’t united as a country until 1861. Most arrived as single men, eventually traveling to Italy to find wives and then returning to California to raise families.

Lavezzola Ranch

 

For authoritative research on the Lavezzola, Costa, Romano and other Italian families of Sierra County, California I recommend Corey Peterman who is a historian for the Sierra County Prospect. He is a descendant of the Mottini family, who first came to California from Domodossola, Italy in 1869.(https://sierracountyprospect.org/2021/02/24/corys-historical-corner-2-24-21/)

 

STONE MASONRY & LANDSCAPING

The regions of Liguria and Piedmont are steep and were extensively terraced so Northern Italians were practiced at stone masonry and dry-wall rock stacking and brought their skills with them. In the 1970s I remember the elders of Downieville, mostly men of Italian ancestry, meeting on the public bench and discussing the building of Highway 49 in the 1920s, a road that required many rock retaining walls and frequent repairs. Several of these men worked for the highway department and were clearly the experts with tales to tell that featured their superior craftsmanship. Many of the dry-stacked rock walls in the Sierra Nevada foothills were created by Italian Americans, although after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, there were also Chinese work crews building ditches, roads, trails etc. This kind of work was always available and not limited to a specific group.

 

Tyler-Foote Crossing Road, 1923
Photo by Ed Bawden

In 1913 Tyler-Foote Crossing Road was built to connect North Columbia and the Alleghany mining regions by crossing the Middle Yuba River. On the south side of this narrow and steep canyon a road was carved into the hillside then secured with dry-stacked rock retaining walls and bolts that are daring in design, perform efficiently and display marvelous craftsmanship. Most of the laborers were Italian, Swiss and Slovenian.

 

GOLD MINING

As early as 1850 unnamed Italians discovered hardrock gold on the Sierra Buttes and by 1852 there were 20 arrastras functioning. The Arrastra was a circular milling device, of Spanish origin, that utilized drag-stones for milling that were powered by mules or water. It’s not certain that Italians were using those first 20 arrastras, but they appeared to have an affinity for this technique. According to Farriss & Smith’s Sierra County history (1882) arrastras were used in the ravine below the Sierra Buttes Mine. At the time there were 30 in operation, all powered by water and all run by Italians. Those men were John Trombetta, John Fopiono, Mateo Arata, Isaac Martinetti and Ned Tartini, and John Lavezzola.

Water-powered Arrastras near Sierra City
Photographer Unknown

An article in the Daily Alta California on February 14, 1888, reports that Italians were heavily involved in mining in the mineral counties of California, especially in Amador, El Dorado, Calaveras and Sierra, and in the State of Nevada. Actually, they were ambitious and worked at many jobs, but preferred ranching, farming and underground gold mining.

 

CHARCOAL BURNING

Until the early 1870s charcoal manufacturing was pursued solely by the Chinese. In Truckee, when the transcontinental railroad was completed, Sisson, Wallace, & Company hired 350 Chinese laborers who cut wood and produced up to 58,000 bushels of charcoal a week for smelters in the gold and silver mines of Virginia City. As intolerance and persecution against them reached a feverish pitch the Chinese were forced to yield the trade to the Italians. 

 

The charcoal making trade was ancient in Europe but in the American West it was a multifaceted industry requiring a labor force that included: wood cutters, muleteers to transport the timber, kiln or pit builders and charcoal providers (retail or shipped). The kiln or pit controllers were responsible for monitoring the varying temperatures inside. Once the charcoal was produced it was bagged and loaded onto freight wagons and then transported to smelting furnaces. That kind of solvency applies only if you’re working for a big company. Life for most Italian charcoal burners was extremely harsh; they were required to live outdoors most of the year in makeshift camps near their wood sources.

Charcoal Kiln Near Gaston, South Yuba River, n.d.
Photograph Courtesy of the Nevada County Historical Society

Charcoal requires slowly heating wood in the absence of air (pyrolysis). Slow charring removes moisture and volatile gasses producing a light, black form of carbon resembling coal. Charcoal burns much hotter than wood (twice the heat of seasoned wood) and more evenly and consistently. Carbonization leaves a low ash content and low amounts of trace elements like sulfur and phosphorous, meaning it produces “clean” heat that is intense enough to reduce iron oxide into pig iron (2,600 ̊F to 3,000 ̊F). Charcoal is also much easier than wood to transport and store with one-third its weight and one-half its volume. Before the 1830’s all iron in the United States was produced by using charcoal as the fuel. After the Civil War coal and coke iron production became significant, but production of charcoal iron increased until 1890 and remained significant until after World War I. 

 

California charcoal producers typically used an open pile, or meiler, or temporary surface ovens. They were shallow fire pits with tightly packed wood billets stacked on their ends to form a conical pile with openings at the bottom to admit air and a central shaft to serve as a flue. The whole pile is then covered with soil, turf or moistened clay. The firing begins at the bottom of the flue, and gradually spreads outwards and upwards. It took constant surveillance and considerable skill to keep the smoldering wood from bursting into flame and losing the charcoal. In the 1980s, while conducting an archaeological survey at Wild Plum, near Sierra City, I was mystified by shallow circular and rectangular features on the ground in an even-aged forest of black oak and incense cedar, until I realized they were surface ovens for producing charcoal. Discoveries in the field are way more exciting than breakthroughs in a book or document – it must be the fresh air. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries there was charcoal making observed in the Yuba and Bear River watersheds at Sierra City, Gaston, Chicago Park and other places.

Carbonari in Sonoma County
Photographer Unknown

Professional charcoal burners were called colliers, the same term used to describe coal miners. In the Sierra Nevada foothills colliers were usually Italian and they were called Carbonari. It was a lonely and smoky job, they had to tend the wood piles for long hours and ensure that fires neither flared up nor died out. It took 35 cords of wood to yield 1,750 bushels of charcoal. Once the charcoal cooled it was broken into short lengths about six inches long and was placed in sacks for distribution. Charcoal manufacturing in California was a minor industry when compared to similar industries in the state, such as sawmills, shake manufacture, planing mills, and other forms of lumber manufacturing. An aspect of charcoal production that is seldom discussed was the through depletion of trees and the slow growth and regeneration after a decade, or so, of woodcutting.

 

Gaston is no more, but it was once the site of a former mining community in Nevada County. At an elevation of 5,062’, Gaston was mid-slope between Washington on the South Yuba and Graniteville on the San Juan Ridge. In 1898 the Gaston Ridge Mine employed 20 men and by 1900, there was a population of about 200, enough to support a town with stagecoach service, two stores, a hotel, a saloon, a hardware store, a post office, a water system, a fire company and a school. In 1904, the town boasted electric lights and a telephone line to Nevada City. By 1934 there was a 40-stamp mill in operation. About 1910 a group of Italians from southern Italy arrived, enough to warrant a “New Town” below the “Old Town”. Many of the Italians were employed to cut wood and produce charcoal for use in the mine’s forges.

 

In the Nevada County towns of Nevada City and Grass Valley Italian names were frequent in the City Directories where they had long been prominent in business and other professions. Among the family names are Gallino, Personeni, Seghezzi, Ghidotti, Pardini, Falconi, and Tassone to name just a few. In the 1880s J. Debernardi was a charcoal dealer on Spring Street in Nevada City, while in the same town G. Ramelli sold cedar posts and charcoal. If you were looking for something exotic to dine on while downtown you could sample Italian Swiss confectioner, Antonio Tom’s Nevada City restaurant, which served "ice cream and oyster dinners" (Nevada Daily Transcript July 3, 1885).

 

There were also Italians living near Camptonville, in eastern Yuba County, which included the Martignone, Massa, Zerga, Cassano and Pendola families.

 

Antone Agostini and Louis Orzalli settled near what would become Chicago Park in about 1875. They and other Italians worked as woodcutters and charcoal manufacturers. Most of them left when the trees were depleted, but Antone Agostini remained and was a member of the first school board in Chicago Park in 1898. In 1881 the Orzallis purchased 40 acres in Chicago Park and planted an orchard and vineyard. In 1901 Mary Orzalli opened Orzalli’s Pine Grove Resort, a stop on the Nevada County Narrow Gauge Railroad.

After 1880 most of the emigration was from the Mezzogiorno, or southern Italy. The vast majority were farmers and laborers looking for a steady source of work – any work. By 1920, when immigration began to taper off, more than 4 million Italians had come to the United States and represented more than 10 percent of the nation's foreign-born population. This new generation of Italian immigrants was distinctly different in makeup from those that had come before.

 

There is seldom any mention of women in California history until American foreigners first started settling in Alta California in the 1840s. Up front, there is no mention of Indian women at all. The most visible women in the gold rush were Indigenous, Mexican, Chilean, French and Chinese women who worked in the domestic marketplace and in commercialized leisure. Most white women were prevented from more robust participation in the gold rush economy by Victorian mores and men who saw them as possessions. Most white women enjoyed a comparatively luxurious lifestyle, being spoiled by men looking for their companionship and their hand in marriage, while minority women had a much different and adverse experience during the California gold rush.

 

Prostitution was not normally found in Indian tribes, but due to the hardships of war and starvation some Native women were vulnerable and white men found they could kidnap and rape native women with little fear of retribution. Chinese women were also imported into California for the sexual gratification of men. In the 1850’s hundreds of Chinese women were slaves imported by wealthy Chinese merchants and sold to brothel owners at regular auctions.

 

Mexican women were actively engaged in the gold rush. They sold food on the streets and in restaurants, took in laundry, worked as entertainers, as waitresses and they ran Faro and Monte games. When Josefa, a card dealer in Downieville, refused the unwanted advances of a drunken man she killed him with a knife and she was hanged the following day after a sham of a trial (see: Josefa of Downieville. Yuba Trails and Tales. June 28, 2019). Because French women were often running hotels, restaurants and gambling halls they were sometimes assumed to be loose and accessible. Women of different races and cultures were considered subordinate to the white population which made it acceptable for the men to ignore their religious and moral codes.

 

Generally speaking, an Italian man seeking a wife returned to Italy for one, married her there, then brought her back here. Some families settled in Italian communities and some did not, they seemed to value the community they chose to live in. The Italian culinary legacy is especially apparent in California and Italian women played a large role in this facet of cultural expression – they did most of the cooking and a lot of gardening in far more labor-intensive times. Italian agriculturalists introduced key crops such as eggplant, bell peppers, broccoli, and artichokes. They also played an integral role in the development of the state’s wine industry.

 

One Italian woman who lived about ten miles from the aforementioned Josepha was Madam Romargi. Her story, like Josefa’s, is often repeated with free-ranging opinions about “what really happened.” She and her husband operated a way-station, or stage stop, on the road between Camptonville and Downieville for over three decades.

 

Their original venture was called Florida House and was located on the trail to Goodyears Bar. Soon afterwards she moved it to the main road and called it the Sierra Nevada House. Most people crudely called it “Nigger Tent” because supposedly two black men set up a blacksmithing shop or made shakes at this location. It was well known as a dangerous hangout for thieves in a dark and remote part of the forest.

 

She and her husband were Italians and were sometimes referred to as gypsies (?). According to her friend, local stagecoach driver Bill Meek, she was beautiful and escaped a bad marriage in Florida by running away to California with an organ grinder named J.D. Romargi and his monkey. They, all three, played in mining camps until changing professions and settling at this location in a dense forest at 5,000’.

A Wanted Poster for Algi Romargi after He and Another Man Escaped from Jail in Downieville

Madam Romargi’s road house (she was clearly in charge) was constantly badmouthed as a rendezvous for bad men and bad women, yet it was a popular watering stop for stages, with whom she had good relationships. Meek, based in nearby Camptonville, was a stage driver for most of his life (1856-1936) and knew Mrs. Romargi from the time he was a young boy and was her friend as long as she was in business. In his autobiography he admitted that the house was often full of “rough characters” but he was always treated with kindness and never had any problems with her or her associates. But according to local newspapers, other people did. Wells Fargo and Co. carried gold from the mines and robberies and holdups were becoming too commonplace in this locale, so they sent their detective, Captain Charles Aull, to investigate. After a stagecoach robbery on the LaPorte Road he was able to gain enough evidence to convict Algie D. Romargi, Mrs. Romagari’s grandson, and send him to Folsom Prison. Jane Romargi suffered acute blood poisoning from a wound on the back of her hand and died at the age of 78.

In 1936, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s director, began to secretly surveil individuals and organizations he deemed likely to side with the enemy during the impending war. A year later President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Columbus Day a national holiday, largely as a result of intense lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, an influential Catholic fraternal organization.

John Florea/ The LIFE Picture Collection/ Getty Images

Then, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. Though war had not been declared on Italy, FBI agents began arresting Italians anyway in anticipation of entering the war in Europe. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued a series of proclamations that declared citizens of Japan, Germany and Italy to be “alien enemies of the United States.” One hundred forty-seven Italians were already in custody when the U.S. declared war on Italy on December 11, 1941.

 

In 1937 President Roosevelt created Columbus Day, a national holiday. Naturally the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere objected to the holiday that commemorated them being “discovered” and subsequently colonized and enslaved. On Columbus Day in 1992, the 500^th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in this hemisphere, Berkeley, California became the first U.S. city to switch to Indigenous Peoples' Day. This year, San Francisco, a city with a profound Italian presence in its past celebrated its first Italian Heritage Day. We’re moving in the right direction.

Nisenan Basket

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Note: A few miles east of Sierra City and over the summit is Sierra Valley, a large, flat and beautiful grassland/wetland area that is the headwaters of the Middle Fork of the Feather River. A group of Italian-Swiss from a similar region in the Alps settled here because it resembled their homeland – but that is another story (see: The Sierran, Spring/Summer 1998).